


Safe Room Requiem

by ccuddlefish



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Crushes, F/F, Romance, Seb's kinda there but its mostly people bitching bout him behind his back, theres like. Joseb in passing it's not really There
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 18:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3498635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ccuddlefish/pseuds/ccuddlefish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Working out some personal headcanons for the functionality of the safe room. </p><p>Juli Kidman walks into a magic mirror and finds herself in the care of a disgruntled nurse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Magic Mirror?

**Author's Note:**

> This is, like, almost smut. I think Kidman touches a titty at one point but it's all a big gay blur. Enjoy I guess!
> 
> EDIT: OKAY SO! The Assignment came out! I was wrong! I was so, so wrong. Think of this as more of an AU than a headcanon then.

The first thing Juli Kidman noticed was warmth. No, not warmth, heat, pulsing in waves and lulling her to sleep. She pulled the covers up to her chin and burrowed her face deeper into the pillow. On the heels of the sense of heat came a buzzing-humming noise, right by her ear. Not willing to relinquish the dregs of sleep that still clung to her cranium, it was a few minutes until Juli rolled out of the cot and investigated. 

A few things became apparent at once. She was fully clothed, including her harness and stiletto heels. Her jeans looked a little rumpled, but that was because she'd just (apparently) slept in them. She lifted her head, eyes skimming around and making contact with an inkwell and a journal, perched on a carved wood desk, unopened, the leather new and uncracked. A slip of tape was lazily rolled across the cover, bearing her name. Ignoring that for the time being, her head swivelled to check out the rest of her cell (for that was what it was) and she caught a whiff of stale air and bleach, so shocking to her freshly-awakened brain that Juli coughed, eyes watering. On the heels of the pain in her eyes came nausea as the foul air worked its way down her throat. She held her hand over her mouth and sat on the edge of the bed until the floor stopped pitching and rolling and started to behave normally again. 

The source of the heat was an old gas heater. Her eyes found it once the world had settled and she sighed, holding a palm up to it idly to warm her cool fingers as her eyes panned the rest of the room. Hang in there! chirped a faded poster on the wall above the bed with a pictorial of a kitten clinging desperately to a tree branch. Besides the heinous poster and the cot, there was a desk directly parallel to the cot bearing the journal and inkwell, a bedside table crammed next to the bed with a lamp that was missing its shade, and the heater. The room was oblong, with the furniture at the back end and a door at the other end. 

Juli's heels clacked across the floor surprisingly loudly as she briskly walked to the door. It was reinforced steel with a barred window at eye level and a slot to slide a food tray through. At the thought of food, her stomach protested, gurgling unpleasantly, and she clamped a hand to it during the pain that followed, like a knife to the gut. 

The rest of her body, now that the ice was broken, launched into complaint. Her nerves were jangling with stress, her head hurt like a motherfucker, she was pretty sure her ankle was twisted from running from what her employers called "Haunted" and on top of that, her eyes felt like they'd been removed, rolled in tissue paper a few times and stuck back in. She caught another whiff of bleach and her panic mounted, heart kicking up a gear. The door was bolted shut and all she could see through the bars was a few strips of ugly grey wallpaper and another door directly opposite hers. 

"Fucking stupid bitch got me trapped here!" She growled, hands balling into fists as she remembered how she got her ass into this, by following some nurse into a glowing mirror. Not one of her brighter ideas, she lamented, banging a fist on the door with a loud clang. Of course, now the nurse had made herself scarce and Juli was hungry, achy and alone. 

"Hey! Nurse!" She called out into the hallway with a moderate amount of volume, still unsure whether this place was safe, but even considering she was trapped in a cell, Juli still felt calmer than back out there. A record played soothing music somewhere in the hallway, and even though her gut still nagged, her nerves were soothed a little bit. 

Just because her nerves weren't being plucked like violin strings didn't mean she wasn't pissed, though. 

"HEY!" She yelled again. This time the harsh sound of low-heeled shoes on the tile reached her ears, tangling in an ugly way with the crackly record in the hall, no doubt in response to the fuss she was making. She caught a few slivers of white through the bars, a fragment of a creamy cheek and a splash of red lipstick. For a few seconds, what was undoubtedly the nurse she had followed lingered on the other side of the bars. The smell of bleach had disappeared and was replaced by the faint scent of honey and something more pungent, eucalyptus maybe? She was so intent on dissecting the contents of the woman's scent she barely noticed when keys jangled in the lock of the door and it groaned outwards, a squawky crunching noise marking the scraping of the rust on the hinges. 

The smaller woman looked up at her, gaze piercing her even under half-lidded eyes and making her stomach twist. They stood face to face, glaring at each other. The still unnamed nurse was significantly shorter than Juli and of a petite build. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a ponytail, and it was thick, long, shiny and dark, starkly different from her own short, fluffy honey blond locks. A little white folded cap perched neatly atop her head, secured with bobby pins. The eyes that looked up at her behind the glare of her glasses, were, she realized with a start- pitch black. The nurse said nothing, preferring to continue the ludicrous staring match, and Juli's eyes wandered over her high cheekbones and sharp jaw down to her red lips and her slightly pointed chin. Her gaze skated past her long neck to her starched white uniform with the apron over and small red cross on the breast. Still, the nurse said nothing, just looked, dark eyes completely shrouded and unreadable, mouth firmly closed. Juli Kidman was not one to keep her mouth shut when she was truly pissed off, though, and she broke the silence almost immediately.

"What the fuck is going on?" The nurse looked at her disdainfully, tutted softly and spun on her heel. 

"Soooo many admissions and not a single discharge..." She muttered, an edge of annoyance tinging her otherwise melodic voice. She continued to walk away, slipping the keys into her pocket with a final jangle. Juli's face grew hot, blood absolutely boiling with anger. This woman locked her in a cell and then had the audacity to act like she was annoying her? She started stomping after the nurse, but her stomach got stuck through with another quick darting of pain, and quickly following her head, ankle and other various bits all chimed in. 

She searched her satchel and the cell, but there was nothing by way of food besides countless jars of heinous, chemical-smelling green slime, and she'd have to be three days stranded in a desert to even consider that. She decided if food did not make its way to her any time soon, she would eat her shoes first. 

Food on the brain, she wandered past two other cell doors on each side of the hallways, past the record player playing that endless loop and into a waiting room with no exit. The nurse was behind a counter, perched on a stool with her legs crossed and filing her nails. A quick examination of the room left her with a locked metal grate, some musty and ratty chairs, a corkboard with nothing on it, and a newspaper stand bearing yesterday's copy of the Krimson City Post. There appeared to be a door behind the nurse, who had looked up from her nails to watch her like a child might watch a bug in a jar, with mild, detached interest behind her cat's-eye tortoiseshell glasses, but when she approached the gap in the counter to examine it, the smaller woman looked at her vindictively and slammed the hinged piece over, bolting it into place and making the countertop a solid slab. Afterwards, she daintily crossed her legs and resumed her nail care. Unable to shake the feeling of being snubbed, Juli considered vaulting it, but the message was pretty clear: Get lost.

Wish I knew how, bitch, she thought. I'd be happy to get a one way ticket out of here. Juli groaned loud enough to elicit another glare from Nurse Ratched (The title seemed fitting for the moment) and flopped into a tattered chair, flaking off chips of paint from the armrests as her hands ran across them. Her head brushed against the wall as she tipped it back and eyed the chipping eggshell ceiling. 

"So do you, like, eat?" She said at a normal volume, half expecting her question to be ignored. She was shocked when, eventually, came the reply from the desk: 

"Are you hungry? We're a little cut off from the kitchen right now-" The nurse gestured to the blank space on the ugly wall where a door might have been, in another time, shrugging her dainty shoulders, "But I should have something." 

"Would you?" Juli asked, tentatively, as she wasn't entirely convinced that the confusing woman in white wouldn't revoke her offer at the drop of a hat. 

"Wait here." She sighed, not happy, but not reneging on her deal, either, and disappeared into the door beside her. Her problem on the verge of being solved, Juli was able to relax into the cool air of the waiting room, the music seemed to swell, soothing her aches and pains and the slight smell of bleach-based cleaner (not as strong as in the hallway) wafted over to her. Wrinkling her nose at the sour tang, she turned her head to the counter, eyeing the pad, lying open where Nurse Ratched had abandoned it. 

The chair creaked loudly as she rose, but besides that she made barely any noise as she crept towards the counter and spun the pad around to face her. The page was scrawled with tall, swooping handwriting that could only be the nurse's. It was pretty, she could give it that, but it was like deciphering code as she brought the pad up to the light and squinted. Line after line of similar words and repeating patterns ran down the page. With a start, she finally recognised a name, halfway down the second page. 

Joseph Oda. B. 1:36:22.   
Joseph Oda. B. 1:42:67.  
Sebastian Castellanos. A. 1:58:29.  
Joseph Oda. B. 2:00:45.  
Leslie Withers. D. 2:35:88.  
Joseph Oda. B. 2:37:40.

It continued that way for a whole page, listing a name, a single capital letter and what appeared to be a time, counting upwards since the commencement of something. Skimming back through, the book continued to list those three names, her partners and the other person in here with them. Joseph showed up the most, Leslie the least, but she could not for the life of her decipher what it meant. It was almost like a check-in schedule. Did that mean her partners came here too? 

This was too fucking weird. First off, she walks into a mirror and ends up in a hospital corridor with no exit, but other people have been here too? Mulling this over, she replaced the pad and returned to her seat, speeding up when she heard the low, clunking noise of heels behind the door and flopping into the seat just in the nick of time, Nurse Ratched rounding the corner and pushing the door open with a rusty squeal of protest. 

The nurse returned bearing two apples, half a package of beef jerky and two cookies, individually wrapped, all balanced on a plate. They teetered uneasily, mostly due to the way she tried to look unruffled as she stalked over to Juli, one hand under the plate and her eyes squarely on her, like she might try some funny business in the two seconds it would take to hand her the food. 

One of the apples teetered when her shoe caught on a lip in the carpet, rolling off the edge of the plate. Juli hopped up, caught it and slid a hand to the other woman's waist to steady her. 

"Whoa. You okay there, sweetheart?" Shit. Right after she said it, the words fizzled in the air and died. They just popped out, and the glare on Nurse Ratched's face ramped from vaguely spine-tingling to bloodcurdling. The woman almost hissed as she handed her the food and stalked back to her desk. Juli could barely keep herself from snickering, although the situation wasn't really all that funny. It was pretty entertaining to watch the nurse fume and grumble from her stool, so she watched that for a few seconds. Soon, though, she sat down to eat, balancing the plate on her knees and listening to the perpetual soundtrack of this idyllic little island, so a part of this place you couldn't hear the crackly record playing unless you were listening for it. The smell of bleach was gone, replaced by honey and what was definitely eucalyptus. She ate quickly, and returned to her cell for a nap afterwards, not really knowing what else to do and hoping rest would cure some of her many ailments. She felt the nurse's gaze linger on her back as she passed the counter, her pen scritch-scratching over her pad of paper.


	2. Tease

Her eyes snapped open, and Juli teetered on her stilettos, momentarily off-balance. She righted herself by leaning on a wall and blinked. Just a moment ago, she was sleeping... Her surroundings were familiar- this was where the mirror was. It was just a dull hunk of glass now, however, bearing no hint of the glow it had held when she had followed the nurse into it. Scoffing and reloading her gun, she flounced off, not trying to concern herself with stuffy nurses and magic mirrors.

However, the next time she passed a mirror, it held that same yellow glow. Eyeing it suspiciously, Juli really didn't feel like getting locked up in a cell again, but it had been hours since then and she was bone-tired. She assumed it might have been nighttime- her watch had broken as soon as she woke up in this hellhole- and she could feel the pull of sleep and the allure of that heater tugging her towards the mirror. As if her body knew what to do, she stepped forwards effortlessly and- a flash of light, she was sitting upright on her cot. The heater's reassuring warmth licked at her hands, and for a moment she stopped and revelled in how easily her brain accepted this. This was how things worked now, you stepped into magic mirrors and ate weird stale cookies that scary-in-a-hot-way nurses procured for you. 

She rounded the corner to the waiting room, and the nurse's eyes flicked up to her for a moment, giving her a once-over. 

"You look exhausted. You should take better care of yourself." She sighed, pursing her lips and shaking her head. 

"Mm-hmm." Juli was too exhausted to do anything but agree and go back to her room to fall asleep, listening to the scratching of the nurse's pen across the page.

Eventually this became habit, Juli found herself returning to the hospital block whenever she could. She could sleep for hours but no time actually appeared to pass, and after a new challenge or monster, she found the music calming and the rhythmic noise of the pen on paper lulling. Every time she returned, Nurse Ratched (the nickname felt a little mean now, even saying it in her head) became a little friendlier, and she and Juli spent time chit chatting and, when that was over, Juli would lie a head on her shoulder, next to her behind the counter, and she'd drift off to the smell of honey and eucalyptus and bleach and the noise of words being carved into paper. She didn't really bother to ask what the nurse was writing in her loopy script, and the nurse never offered.

Her name was Tatiana. She put a name to a face, and Nurse Ratched, or more simply, the nurse, became Tatiana. It was a pretty name. It was maybe her fifth visit, and she was zoned out, leaning across the counter but her head was twisted to the side, staring out into nothing. She adjusted her rucksack on her shoulders, and the glass jars of slime clinked together, reminding her:

"Do you have any use for these? I have tons." She pulled out a few jars of the stuff, the acrid chemical smell climbing through the jar lid to burn her nose. Tatiana sniffed, nose scrunching up, and leaned over to get a better look, slim finger idly caressing the edge of her notepad. She'd forgotten to do up her top shirt button, and even though the fabric was heavily starched, the other buttons were straining a little bit and Juli could see, like, right into her shirt. Naturally, this was extremely distracting, and she wasn't paying attention when Tatiana murmured something softly. After a few seconds of dead air, she lifted a hand and snapped her fingers in front of Juli's face, the loud noise ringing out in the musty air and startling her immensely. 

"My face is up here." She said drily. 

"Maybe you should do up your shirt. Lot of creeps out here in the middle of nowhere." Juli coughed, averting her gaze.

"I am aware how Mr. Castellanos feels about the state of my shirt buttons." She looked at Juli over the rim of her glasses, a smile playing over her lips. The taller woman let out a whooping laugh. 

"Are you kidding? God, Joseph'd kill him." Tatiana raised an eyebrow. spurred by this acknowledgement, Juli continued. 

"He's always on my ass about that stuff. He'd probably kill me, too, if he found out, so why don't you do me a favor and do up your button?" She said through laughter, half-serious and half-not. Tatiana reached for her shirt, nail tapping on the undone button. She lifted her arms above her head and stretched for a moment while Juli coughed quietly into her fist. When her hands found their way back to the countertop, however, her fingers went one row down and undid a second button, the stiff dress sliding outwards to accomodate. 

"It'll be our little secret." She laughed, and the slit of pale chest between the edges of her shirt shook, then, tossing her hair over her shoulder, she became all business. 

"I can take those off your hands. Unfortunately I doubt you'll find much use for them besides stinking and taking up space, considering that-" she gestured to the metal grate, beyond which lay a hallway to a room shrouded in shadow, "Isn't open for you. Shall we propose a trade?" Juli was too busy considering the ramifications of that hallway being unavailable that she barely reacted to a first aid kit being slid onto the table. 

"I know your ankle's hurting you, I've seen you limping, and God knows what else is injured or infected, considering the filthy state of this place, so if you give me some of your stash, I'll patch you up? Sound good?" Her whole body jumped at the offer, straining for comfort, but Juli laughed.

"What? I thought you'd be making me a fun proposition." Tatiana swatted her arm in response, rolling her eyes, a barely noticeable sheen of red creeping into her pearly cheeks. 

"Nasty. Do you want my patch-up or not?" 

"Sure. Go wild, I have way too much of this slime crap anway." 

Even though the nurse's hands were brusque, businesslike, Juli couldn't help but sigh when they slid off her shoe and probed the sore ankle, soft little pulses of relief darting up her leg.

"You really shouldn't be cavorting around in stilettos, you're going to break an ankle." Juli groaned instead of answering, muscles quivering with exhaustion as she sunk further into the ratty chair. Tatiana rolled her eyes, hand emerging from the kit with a small tin of balm, sliding her legs under her and sitting down onto the ground so as to get a better look. She dipped her fingers into it and spread them over the soreness, leaving a dull pulse of heat behind and all but alieving any pain. The softly ticking grandfather clock, only to be heard a few inches away from it, punctuated the silence as Tatiana rummaged around in the first aid kit. She found a roll of gauze, wrapping it snugly around her ankle and securing it with tape. 

"Now, I am of the diagnostic opinion that your ankle is dead tired and abused , so I'm going to have to ask you to stay off those stilts for a while," She smirked, flat black eyes still intent upon the other woman's leg.

"If you want something worse than a mild sprain, please feel free to disregard my advice." Her voice was laced with sarcasm and dripping with condescension, but she was chewing on the inside of her lip and her eyes had skimmed from Juli's knee to her face. In the light, her wide eyes caught and they flared a deep golden brown. Juli blinked and squinted, leaning forward in her chair to get a better read on her emotion, but after a few seconds her face cleared, fingers still lingering softly on her leg. She remained kneeling on the ground, eyes trained to Juli's face, though. The sight of her, dark eyes wide and shirt half undone, combined with her current position kneeled on the ground, a ball of heat curled into her gut and sent shame winging up her spine as the heat slid lower. Flushing, Juli averted her gaze and squirmed in her seat, crossing her legs tighter. 

Tatiana rose, keeping a hand on her knee and leaning over to examine a shallow scrape at the taller woman's hairline, and while that thing was stinging and the cooling paste she was now dabbing onto it felt like heaven, Juli had to avert her eyes to avoid looking directly into her shirt. The nurse leaned over further to fuss with something on her neck that needed attention, exposing her long, pale neck and the lace edge of something as red as her lipstick. The uniform, no matter how starched it was, was useless to cover anything without its buttons done, and eventually the red lace bra crept out further. She was so flustered that her brain was fried at this point, only slightly registering the sting of disinfecting ointment on her shoulder. She watched the dark eyelashes dart back and forth as she tutted over something, the heat travelling up from her gut into her throat. 

God, she thought, scary in a hot way had never felt so true. 

"You're done." Tatiana sighed softly, the honey smell floating off her in waves. Her eyes flickered up, features settling into a smirk when she noticed the blush mounting in the other woman's cheeks. Juli almost groaned when she removed her cool hands, but instead she plunged her teeth into her lip and bit down hard. The nurse stalked back to the counter, picking up the pen and the chorus of the grandfather clock and the record player was joined by the scratching of ink on paper. Juli drew a long sigh in through clenched teeth. Tease.


	3. Lull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juli turns to Joseph for girl tips!

The next time she met up with Joseph, neither of them was in great shape. Juli brushed wood splinters out of her sopping wet hair and Joseph reloaded his gun, the sound of bullets clicking into a chamber becoming louder, if only for a moment, than the faint and dormant growling of a few Haunted nearby. Far above them, a speck of light that was the hole they had crashed through loomed ominously. 

"Well, no going back that way." Grunted Kidman, pulling her gun out of its holster and sighing as more bullets clicked into a chamber. Joseph nodded in agreement, and they set out. 

They fell into a rhythm, in those stuffy hospital corridors, able to keep up a stream of small talk and still kill the things after them. The subject eventually found its way to Juli's new footwear, weathered old leather lace-up numbers, clunky on her feet and extremely different from her dainty stilleto heels. She did, however, notice a difference in that her ankle wasn't complaining nearly as much, half due to the more practical footwear and half due to the bandage still emitting a few tendrils of soothing heat.

"Where'd you get those?" Joseph grunted, ducking a swipe from a clawed hand and driving a gloved fist upward into a jaw with a sickening crack. He followed it up with a bullet into an eye point-blank, and the head before him popped like a bubble in a summer breeze.

"Hm?" Juli asked absentmindedly, counting the amount of bullets she had left. 

"Shoes." He puffed, leaning on a wall and wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

"You've been to the hospital block?" Joseph turned and looked at her, almond-brown eyes looking into her brain, like he was trying to dissect her thoughts. Finally, tentatively, he spoke:

"Yeah? I thought that was just a... Me thing." He muttered, creasing his brow and leaning back against the brick. 

"Well, apparently it's a Me thing too. Nurse gave them to me. Said I needed to get off my stilts. She was probably concerned about me, though you wouldn't know it with her icy attitude." Kidman rolled her eyes and Joseph tweaked a sympathetic smile.

"She spoke to you? All I get is a look and a comment about how many new admissions she's getting, and then she writes in her notebook until I leave." 

"Well, maybe she likes me better." 

"I'm not complaining. She gives me the creeps." Joseph pushed off the wall with a grunt and they continued down the hallway.

"I think she's kinda cute." 

"If you like the creepy white girl vibe, sure." Joseph groaned as the noise of another haunted was carried across the stale hospital breeze, along with the choking stench of rot and blood. 

"Just respect her. Something makes me think she wouldn't be too keen on your macho attitude." Joseph continued as he sighed, raking a hand through his hair and compulsively counting his ammo. 

"I respect women! Women leave my bedroom thinking 'Wow, that Juli Kidman really respected the shit outta me.'" Joseph groaned in part disgust part exasperation, swatting her on the shoulder before jogging ahead.

"Gross! And unnecessary." 

"I can't help it. It's my job. Besides, it's not as if Sebastian respects the shit outta you, either." At the mention of his partner, Joseph perked up. 

"He does!" Joseph's ears reddened. 

"Professionally." 

"Don't remind me." He sighed, stalking ahead and neatly stepping aside as a Haunted lunged. Joseph rolled his eyes and raised the axe above its head as it lost its balance, plunging forwards and clawing at air. The axe came down with a whistle and a thunk, and a head rolled past Juli's shoes. Joseph continued to lament as he yanked the long handled- blade out from where it was stuck in a cervical vertebra. 

"He knows I'm bi, I keep catching him checking out my ass, but he's being a huge baby about it. God, every time I so much as mention another guy he goes off on how heterosexual he is! We get it!" Juli laughed, plugging a bullet into the skull of a Haunted rounding the corner. 

"Guy's so far into the closet he's in fucking Narnia." Joseph concluded, deftly flicking a match across the sandpaper strip, dropping it onto the body, watching flames flicker up, spurred on by an unknown accelerant.

"Maybe he's a lost cause?" Juli stopped, the flames before her and the screech of the creature had become even more commonplace, reminding her how badly she needed a smoke. 

"Now I know you didn't just say that to a man with an axe." 

A puff of a match and a cloud of smoke lazily drifted towards the ceiling. Joseph plopped down onto a nearby wheelchair, letting the ax clatter to the ground. He let her off with a glare, and Juli was glad. She didn't need another lung cancer lecture.

"Whatever, Casanova." Now it was her turn to roll her eyes, blowing another cloud of smoke in his general direction. Joseph flipped her off. She chuckled, and they moved on, but the conversation stuck in her brain.


	4. Shut up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kidman really needs to shut up.

Be nice to her. Kidman woke again in her cell hours later, listening to the music float in. Joseph was with Sebastian, and she had her own agenda, so she'd left those two to do... Whatever they did. She was hot on Leslie's trail, and it was finally time to take a rest. But first... She found herself at the counter. 

"I have more of this green crap." She let the bag thump onto the table, bottles clinking together. 

"You don't look particularly injured. What do you suggest I do in exchange?" 

"They're a gift." Tatiana blinked as she processed that. 

"Oh. Thank you." The surprise wiped itself off her face, replaced by a soft smile and a twinkle in her eye. 

"I was thinking chocolate, but unfortunately that's a little hard to come by down here." They shared a laugh. Tatiana's shirt was buttoned all the way up to the top. Juli was itching to change that, but instead she hopped the counter with a quick jump and a deft twist of her hips, pulling up another stool. The adrenaline from tracking and killing and the thrill of almost-victory left her almost crackling with electricity like a live wire, blue eyes wide and muscles twitching for action. It had made her braver, and she inched her body across the seat, heart going full speed. As we blue eyes lit up and met brown, something changed. 

Tatiana smiled at her, a soft curve of the lips, not much, but coupled with the softening of her eyes as they hit the light and glowed honey, it gave Juli the courage she needed to inch even closer. Just like their first meeting, her eyes skated over the smaller woman's face, across her high, pale cheekbones to her angular, dark eyes, down her cheeks (were they turning peachy with a blush or was she imagining it?) to her red, heart-shaped mouth. It was open slightly, white teeth glinting as she spoke. 

"Hello." Her melodic voice joined the record as it cracked and spat, spinning into silence for a moment before the tune swelled once more and the loop was completed. 

"Don't you get bored around here?" Their faces were merely inches apart. Juli could smell metal and something sweet wafting from her neck as she shifted and turned her head. 

"Sometimes, but I have my books." She gestured to the countertop, presumably to literature perched there, but Juli's eyes never left her face. 

"You know, I have something we could do. Most definitely not boring." The nurse's eyes glittered again, catching and throwing rays of golden light. She turned her head and dipped her chin slightly, the edge of her crimson lip brushing across Juli's cheek for a split second before hovering next to her ear. 

"And what would that be?" Her voice was a whisper, and the metallic smell all but dissipated as the smell of her perfume surged forward. Now or never, Juli thought, as she leaned forward, still vaguely expecting some resistance in the back of her mind. 

None came, however, and she was able to press their lips together, hard. The taste of lipstick worked its way across the corner of her mouth. Tatiana began to plant soft kisses across her mouth, slinging an arm up around her neck so as to pull their bodies closer together. Juli could feel the buttons and the stiff folds of the white cloth pressing hard into her chest, but that was far off and irrelevant anyway, and she would much rather focus on the half-closed black eyes in front of hers. 

"C'mere." She whispered, afraid to shatter the silence and the moment. Sliding a hand onto the tiny woman's waist and another on her thigh, she lifted her up onto the counter, letting Tatiana's long legs wrap around her torso, the heart-shaped lips muttering an oath, low and musical, somewhere close to her ear. The arms tightened on her neck again, and they pressed together, longer now, hot and hasty breaths passing back and forth. God, Juli thought, as her lips slid away with a smack, diverting her attentions further down. She kissed softly along her jaw, her red-smudged lips leaving tiny trails wherever they went. Up she went to her neck, then up to her ear, giving a nip that made the nurse moan and tremble. 

"H-hey-" She gasped, but only for a second before she was cut off by another trail of teeth down her neck, leaving tiny red marks in a patchwork line. 

"Yeah?" Chirped Juli, bringing her lips back to her jaw as her fingers found their way to the nurse's collar, fumbling for a moment before getting a button undone. After she failed the first few tries on the second button, Tatiana slapped her hands away, opting to do it herself. Juli was fine with it, choosing to instead amuse herself by sliding the previously dormant hand on her thigh upwards, hiking the stiff skirt up. The smaller woman couldn't get the buttons undone fast enough, and soon enough the folds flopped forward, leaving her heaving chest open to the air. Again they came together, leaving lipstick marks and the lingering smell of honey and eucalyptus and, again, something metallic. 

When Juli palmed a hand to the slit of undone shirt, her hands caught on metal, a small pendant, warmed by her skin. A tiny gold crucifix.

"Catholic?" She murmured, using her thumb to open the shirt wider. Tatiana only huffed in answer, an angry noise of pain bubbling out of her mouth when Juli's fingers left her chest. 

"Isn't this, like, three whole sins?" Juli whispered into her ear, her free hand reaching down to cup her ass. 

"More than three." Tatiana murmured, fingers tangling their way into the honey brown head of hair before her as the lips on her neck resumed, only to slip off a few seconds later. 

"Well, then, we should stop, shouldn't we? If we're going to Hell and all." Juli removed her hands, leaving her palms exposed to the cool air. The woman on the counter hissed, the full force of her glare turned on the woman across from her once again. 

"Shut up." She hooked an arm around her neck, legs winding tightly around her waist in a lock Juli was sure she would be unable to squirm out of. Her free right hand found its way to shackle itself around her wrist. With a tug, the hand guided hers in between the folds of material and unclasped the snap in the front of her bra. Continuing to guide the hand, she brought it to her chest, holding it there for a moment and then leaning forwards to kiss the taller woman again. 

"Just shut up."


	5. Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's pretty short, but it's just a wrap up and my own little twist on the end of the game! Thanks for reading!

Even after the dust had settled, even after Joseph was gone and Sebastian was left in the building, when she got wrapped up in the confusion of ambulances with their sirens blaring and men in white lab coats and her employer's cold eyes- even after she had woken a few times from a numb stupor- Juli Kidman felt something was missing. She stalked a hospital corridor, blisters forming on her feel from the stiletto heels she had been wearing the whole time- which of course she had, she had been inside STEM, nothing in there was real so neither was the woman. Joseph's eyes, once full of warmth weren't glassy and glazed over with the smell of rot wasn't beginning to emanate from his body because you fucking killed him-

She gasped, inhaling mouthfuls of bleachy air, burning her throat but still she drew breath, hands pulling at her hair, at her neck, like something was wrong, like something had fallen off but all her body parts were still attached, so she was left with a pit for a stomach and holes where her eyes should be. The click of her heels reached a crescendo and then ceased. She had heard something. 

"We pulled a few more survivors!" Chimed a voice, followed by a clomping of boots to the source, the sound of stretchers being wheeled out-

She launched into a run, the endless loop of music floating through her head. 

Rounding a corner, Juli couldn't do anything more than stare as they wheeled the stretcher towards her as the music became louder in her head like a record player turned to blasting volume, ruffling the fine hairs at her hairline. 

Her skin was pearly and oddly pale in the dark, bearing a damp, sickly, iridescent sheen. The thick dark hair had been let down, fanned around her in sticky tendrils and a smudge across the edge of her heart-shaped lips and down part of her cheek was all that was left of her lipstick. Tatiana stirred, limbs in the pale uniform glinting as she passed a few stretches of light under a window. Juli stepped forwards, walking alongside the stretcher like a lost child, hand clinging so hard to the metal it might've broken if she hadn't let go to pass through the set of double doors into the early morning sunlight. 

A single leather glove, coated in a few droplets of slushy, iridescent slime was abandoned on the grey stone steps. Between the bustle of the EMTs she only caught a few snippets of her partners- a pinstriped vest, a flash of glasses, a hand on a bicep, tapping impatiently. It was all too much to process, so she got it in images. Joseph leaned on a paramedic, waving the helping hands away as he tried to stand. The sun came out from behind a cloud, casting slanting rays onto his cheeks and turning his hair into a halo. No gunshot wound to be found. No glassy eyes staring into nothing. He brimmed with life, casting a grin up at the man next to him, partially obscured by the white paramedic uniform, but there was no doubt to who he was. Sebastian lit a cigarette, and the smoke floated lazily into the sky.

Juli Kidman clung to the edge of the stretcher as it trundled towards an ambulance as though she might float away.


End file.
